India’s 1.3 billion people also offer investors an unprecedented opportunity to scale climate resilient communities, commerce, and industry in one of the world’s most dynamic emerging market economies where up to 460 million must survive without electricity.

India’s government, with international help, is pushing hard for renewables: In fact, new coal-fired power plants are on hold until 2022 – the year 175 gigawatt of solar and wind power are projected to come online. Meanwhile, energy needs for India’s power-hungry mines remain at a premium.

Fossil fuels were the backbone of India’s commodity-driven supercycle of the 2000s which, together with China’s, was the greatest in modern history. Amid mounting smog, heat waves and droughts – and collapsing prices for clean technology – Indian coal and oil firms are now unlikely allies with solar.

But the true potential lies in integrating these deployments with existing clean-energy distribution in regions home to at least a third of the world’s population living without electricity. A prime example is India’s high-voltage Green Energy Corridor underwritten by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which, despite some success, has officials concerned over uneven penetration in the poor states it aims to benefit.

The industrial-scale infrastructure associated with India's mechanized mines -- including extensive transportation systems -- hold promise, too. In particular, efforts are underway to green segments of India’s railway network – one of the world’s largest – which consumes more diesel and electricity than any other part of the economy.

Indeed, as climate change is being recognized as an existential threat, India has seldom held more appeal for international asset managers – even among some of the biggest, normally risk-averse institutional investors like pension funds, banks and insurance firms. Yet amid green bonds, climate funds and other inventive mechanisms, large financiers still grapple with cohesive approaches.

Perhaps most onerous is India's lack of development coupled with erratic policies and regulations. But a flexible and burgeoning impact investment market can stimulate matching finance from development agencies, lenders and large institutions. Take the Rockefeller Foundation'sSmart Power India initiative, the country’s largest “anchor-based” network encompassing telecommunications towers, which seeks to spread clean energy to 1,000 rural Indian villages this year.

One nonprofit is advancing this narrative, if quietly, through a unique human capital approach.

Barefoot College is a pioneer which trains women from across the global south to become solar engineers and educators. After sponsoring their travel, the NGO -- also Rajasthan-based -- enabled participants from 77 countries to bring newfound technical skills back to their local communities.

One returned home to Ollagüe, Chile, where Italy’s Enel Green Power installed a solar plant with more than 1,600 photovoltaic panels through a partnership with Phoenix-based mining giant Freeport McMoRan Inc. Now the 150 families of the indigenous Quechua community are enjoying their first ongoing supply of electric power.

For all the challenges inherent in its extreme poverty, India is blessed with mineral resources, clean energy and an entrepreneurial spirit which may make it the planet's ideal ecosystem in the fight against industrial carbon emissions.